


where it hurts

by naheka



Category: Fear the Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pre-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 12:48:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12557728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naheka/pseuds/naheka
Summary: Ficlet, Chris and Alicia bonding.





	where it hurts

**Author's Note:**

> no beta

“It’s because I’m gonna take a bath,” Alicia tells him. 

“Okay.”

“So don’t get used to it.” She finishes placing the butterfly bandage over the cut above his eyebrow.

“Okay,” Chris repeats. “Are we done?”

“We are unless you want a boo boo kiss.”

Chris jerks away from her hands. “I didn’t ask you to help me.”

Alicia tosses the wrappers into the trash. “I didn’t ask you to bleed on my sofa and hog the bathroom.”

Chris glares. “Get out.” He starts to crowd her into the doorway; she stumbles back only a few steps before she refuses to give anymore ground, his chest bumping against hers before his eyes go wide and he retreats. 

“The deal was I get to take a bath.”

“I have to pee,” he hisses, one hand sort of poking at her hip without any real force behind it.

“So pee! The backyard is your fucking oyster.”

Chris folds his arms over his chest. “You’re not in charge of me.”

Alicia mirrors him. “And you’re not my real brother. I’m not giving up the only tub so you can piss on the floor and mold up the tile.”

Chris glowers. “I’m not leaving.”

Alicia pauses. She considers, head tilting and lowered eyelids. Then she takes off her shirt. Chris’s eyes go wide and when she reaches back and undoes the clasp of her bra, the straps falling loose off her shoulders, he goes bright red and squeaks by her, fleeing down the hall to his room. Her giggles follow him until he closes the door on them.

++

There’s a punching bag hanging in the garage. It’s dusty enough Chris is pretty sure it was never Nick’s--he doesn’t strike Chris as the type. He found gloves in the attic once when he was poking around, rotted through with mothballs and the crawl of time. The bag is heavy and it creaks when he jabs at it. He likes the way the chain sounds, the feel of packed sand against his knuckles. He still remembers how to wrap them.

Alicia finds him on a hot day, his shirt stuck to his skin and sweat dripping down his spine. “You stink,” she says, sitting on the step on the door leading back into the house. “Why haven’t you opened the door? Get some air in here.”

Chris shrugs. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

Her face flickers, then smoothes out. She shrugs. “Not really.” She drags a fingertip through the dust on the water heater. “Are you done?”

“I guess.” He unwraps his hands, feeling awkward.

Alicia hops up. “Show me,” she demands.

“What?”

“You know.” She mimes making a fist. “Show me how.”

Chris gestures at the bag. “It’s all yours.” She slaps him upside the head. “Hey! What the fuck?” She tries to slap him again and he grabs her wrist, his fingers slippery with sweat. “Stop it!”

She makes her eyes big and soft and sad, fluttery lashes and all. “C’mon Christopher. Who else is gonna teach me how to throw a punch? Me with the poor dead dad?” She rocks forward, her nose bumping against his jaw. “I’ll trade you something. Something good.”

++

“These two knuckles,” he reminds her, chin hovering over her shoulder. He’s close enough to see the sweat beading on the back of her neck, her hair swept up into a messy bun. He lets go of the fist he showed her how to form. “And not too hard.”

“Okay,” Alicia murmurs. Her fist thumps against the bag, weak and a bad angle; it makes her yelp.

He helps her straighten her wrist. “Turn your hips,” he reminds her, and she’s nestled into him as he uses his body to guide hers. “Like that, good.”

“I like this,” she says, twenty punches later, breathing laboured. “Am I good?” She turns over her shoulder to look at him, grinning and glowing in the dark and the dust and the stifling heat, just an inch away from his face. He remembers the way her nose slid just shy of the corner of his mouth, just forty minutes earlier. 

“You said you were going to give me something,” he reminds her. “Something good.”

Her eyes flicker. “I did, huh?” She leans closer; sweat and her deodorant and his body spray, mint gum and the cardboard boxes stacked against the walls. His eyes close when her lips touch his, just the barest press. He opens them again when he hears the door open and shut; he’s alone again.

++

Chris comes around the corner, headed for the cafeteria, and hears the shouting before he sees the crowd, gathered up against one of the rows of lockers in the hallway. It’s the noise that draws him more than the promise of a scuffle, less of the usually jeering and more panicked, more real. A boy breaks away, running for the office and screaming for the campus police officer. Two more are pulling a girl up from the ground, another girl lying prone and bloody on the pavement. 

Chris has broken into a run before his brain fully processes that brown hair and that jacket; it’s Alicia and Trevor has the same grip on her arm that he had on Chris’s last week in the locker room--Chris has hit him in a tackle before he’s realized what’s happened.

++

They sit outside the principal’s office together. They can hear Madison’s voice, Travis’s. The police officer and three school officials, the parents of the other girl. 

“They talked shit about Nick,” Alicia tells him. 

“Okay.”

“Thanks, I guess. For helping.”

Chris shrugs. “Does your hand hurt?”

“Yeah, actually. A lot.”

Chris shrugs again. “It’ll pass.”

++

He raps his knuckles on the bathroom door. “Hey.”

It swings open, Alicia in front of the bathroom mirror. “You need to pee?”

“No.” He takes the alcohol swab from her fingers. “Look up.”

He cleans her up, gentle on her blooming bruises, just starting to darken on her face, and the small cuts on her knuckles, her hands soft and small in his clumsy fingers. “It doesn’t hurt,” she tells him, when he’s trying to decide if anything needs a bandaid.

“Really?”

“No,” she says, changing her mind. “It does. But I like it.”

He cups his hand over hers, helping her form a fist the way he did the very first time. He remembers when her body curved into his and fit just right; he remembers the way she kissed him and left before he opens his eyes. “I do too.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading.


End file.
